Collar Bomber: The true story of the strangest heist ever

This article was taken from the February 2011 issue of Wired
magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before
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At 2.28pm on August 28, 2003, a middle-aged pizza deliveryman
named Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He
had a short cane in his right hand and a strange bulge under the
collar of his T-shirt. Wells, 46 and balding, passed the teller a
note. "Gather employees with access codes to vault and work fast to
fill bag with $250,000 [£160,000]," it said. "You have only 15
minutes." Then he lifted his shirt to reveal a heavy, boxlike
device dangling from his neck. According to the note, it was a bomb. The teller, who told Wells there was
no way to get into the vault at that time, filled a bag with $8,702
in cash and handed it over. Wells walked out, sucking on a Dum Dum
lollipop he had grabbed from the counter, hopped into his car and
drove off. He didn't get far. Some 15 minutes later, state troopers
spotted Wells standing outside his Geo Metro in a nearby car park,
surrounded him and tossed him to the ground, cuffing his hands
behind his back.

Wells told the troopers that while out on a delivery he had been
accosted by a group of black men who locked the bomb around his
neck at gunpoint and forced him to rob the bank. "It's gonna go
off!" he told them in desperation. "I'm not lying." The officers
called the bomb squad and took positions behind their cars, guns
drawn. Television crews arrived. For 25 minutes Wells remained
seated on the pavement, his legs curled beneath him. "Did you call
my boss?" Wells asked a trooper at one point, apparently concerned
that his employer would think he was shirking his duties. Suddenly,
the device started to emit an accelerating beeping noise. Wells
fidgeted. It looked like he was trying to scoot backwards, to
escape the bomb strapped to his neck. Beep... Beep... Beep. Boom!
The device detonated, blasting him violently on to his back and
ripping a 12cm gash in his chest. The pizza deliveryman took a few
last gasps and died on the pavement. It was 3.18 pm. The bomb squad
arrived three minutes later.

The police began sorting through a
trove of physical evidence. In Wells's car, they discovered the
cane, which turned out to be an ingenious homemade gun. The bomb
itself was likewise a marvel of DIY
construction. It consisted of two parts: a triple-banded metal
collar with four keyholes and a three-digit combination lock, and
an iron box containing two 15cm pipe bombs loaded with doublebase
smokeless powder. The hinged collar locked around Wells's neck like
a giant handcuff. Investigators could tell that it had been built
using professional tools. The device also contained two Sunbeam
kitchen timers and one electronic countdown timer. It had wires
running through it that connected to nothing -- decoys to throw off
would-be disablers -- and stickers bearing deceptive warnings. The
contraption was a puzzle in and of itself.

The most perplexing and intriguing pieces of evidence, though,
were the handwritten notes that investigators found inside Wells's
car. Addressed to the "Bomb Hostage", the notes instructed Wells to
rob the bank of $250,000, then follow a set of complex instructions
to find various keys and combination codes hidden throughout Erie.
It contained drawings, threats and detailed maps. If Wells did as
he was told, the instructions promised, he'd wind up with the keys
and the combination required to free him from the bomb. Failure or
disobedience would result in certain death. "There is only one way
you can survive and that is to co-operate completely," the notes
read in meticulous lettering that would later stymie handwriting
analysis. "This powerful, booby-trapped bomb can be removed only by
following our instructions... ACT NOW, THINK LATER OR YOU WILL
DIE!" It seemed that whoever planned the robbery had also
constructed a nightmarish scavenger hunt for Wells, in which the
prize was his life.

In the hours after Wells was killed, the cops tried the hunt
themselves. The first note was straightforward enough: "Exit the
bank with the money and go to the McDonald's resturaunt [sic]," it
read. "Get out of the car and go to the small sign reading DRIVE
THRU/OPEN 24 HR in the flower bed. By the sign, there is a rock
with a note taped to the bottom. It has your next instructions."
Wells had driven there after he left the bank with the bag of cash.
He retrieved a two-page note from the flower bed, which directed
him up Peach Street to a wooded area, where a container with orange
tape held the next set of instructions. Wells was caught before he
got to that clue, but the investigators picked up the thread,
locating the container with the orange tape. In it, they found a
note directing them 3km south to a small road sign, where the next
clue would be waiting in a jar in the woods nearby. When they got
there, they found the jar, but it was empty. Whoever had set this
macabre ordeal in motion, it seemed, had called it off once the
cops had appeared -- and had probably been watching them every step
of the way.

Wells's clothing added another layer of intrigue. He died
wearing two T-shirts, the outer one with a Guess clothing logo.
Wells wasn't wearing the shirt at work that morning, and his
relatives said it wasn't his. It appeared to be a taunt: can you
guess who is behind this?

That was just one of the questions that perplexed investigators.
What, for instance, was the purpose of the scavenger hunt? Why send
a hostage hopping around Erie in daylight? Why scatter clues in
locations where they might be discovered? How was Wells chosen?

The riddles transfixed the city of Erie and drew headlines in
newspapers from St Louis to Sydney. It also set in motion a
byzantine investigation, with federal agents sniffing out clues and
hunting down leads in twisted pursuit of the shadowy criminal who
came to be known as the Collar Bomber. For seven years, the FBI was engaged in a scavenger hunt of its own, one that the
Collar Bomber seemed to have planned as intricately as the one that
had ensnared Wells. The only question was whether the Feds would
get any further than Wells had.

The hunt began at Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria. That's where Wells was
working at 1.30pm on the day of the robbery, when an order came in
for two sausage-and-pepperoni pizzas to be delivered to the
outskirts of the city. Wells was a loyal employee -- in ten years,
the only time he had called in late was when his cat died. Even though he was at the end of
his shift, he agreed to deliver the order. He walked out of the
shop, pizzas in hand, at about 2pm.

The delivery location, reachable only by a dirt road, was a TV
transmission-tower site in a wooded area off busy Peach Street.
When investigators combed the vicinity, they discovered shoe prints
consistent with Wells's footwear and tyre tracks matching the
treads on his Geo Metro. But the site offered no clues as to who
may have lured him there or what happened once he arrived.

The next day, a reporter and a photographer for the Erie
Times-News headed to the tower. The dirt road leading there was
cordoned off by the authorities, but the journalists spotted a
tall, heavy-set man in denim Carhartt overalls pacing in front of a
home that sat right next to it. His backyard extended almost to the
transmission tower. The man identified himself as Bill
Rothstein.

Rothstein, 59, was an unmarried handyman and a lifelong resident
of the area. He spoke elegantly, like someone who takes great pride
in his mastery of the English language. (He was also fluent in
French and Hebrew.) Rothstein seemed oblivious to the investigation
unfolding beyond his back yard. The journalists, eager to get a
view of the scene, asked Rothstein if he could lead them through
his yard. He agreed. They headed into the thick brush but still
couldn't see much. After spending about 15 minutes at Rothstein's
place, they took off.

Rothstein turned out to be hiding a dark secret. On September
20, less than a month after the bomb killed Wells, Rothstein called
911. "At 8645 Peach Street, in the garage, there is a frozen body,"
he told the police, referring to his own address. "It's in the
freezer."